


Wildlife Patrol

by Pixel_Runner



Series: Shadow Aliens [2]
Category: Alien Invaders - Fandom, teratophilia - Fandom
Genre: Food Withholding, I mean it., Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, It's from the alien's point of veiw, Other, Satire on animal behaviour experiments for $500 Alex, The Humans are the science experiment, Trigger Warnings!, You won't like this, and he doesn't understand humans at all, do not read!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 08:58:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14891556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixel_Runner/pseuds/Pixel_Runner
Summary: In the first weeks after the aliens arrive, one of them finds a female human and her two preschool children hiding in the rubble of a building.  He brings them back to his ship as pets and tries to understand them.  He has no frame of reference.





	Wildlife Patrol

It was the odd heat signature that led me to them.  A pile of rubble in a burned out building with …. Something alive inside.  I was supposed to be clearing out a pack of males that were guarding a food cache nearby and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

 

It took me awhile to find my way into to the little cavern made when a wall had collapsed over a staircase.  Inside was a female with her two cubs. They all made alarm calls when they saw me drop into the space where they were hiding.   

 

I ignored that and investigated the space.  There was a broken pipe dripping water. My scanner said it was reasonably clean for drinking.  There was a hole in the floor that dropped down two stories into the sub-basement. It looked like they were using that corner for waste.  The opening was too small for one of the males to fit in here.

 

What there wasn’t, however was any food.  The female would have to leave the safety of this space to hunt.  Or she would have to eat her young. As soon as she stepped out of the relative safety of this nest, she would be prey to… well everything on the other side of the collapsed wall.  I considered this, then pulled out my ration pack and tried to hand it over. They just cowered away from me. I pantomimed eating it, then felt ridiculous. As if they would understand.  In the end, I stuffed it back in my pocket and climbed out the way I came in.

 

I was barely free when a male, alerted by the distress calls attacked me.  He was significantly bigger than the female, but still comparatively small.  It was a simple thing to dispatch him. I dragged him with me when I went to clear out the nest of males.   The eight of them were hardly work the effort. I stood there, preparing to safely dispose of the bodies when I thought about the female and her cubs.  I rounded up the food cache and set is aside while I incerated the bodies then brought it back to her nest and pushed it in through the opening for her.

 

The next day when I was on patrol, I popped my head in through the entrance.  All three of them were asleep. There was still of the food left, so I ignored them and moved on.

 

The following day when I checked on them, I found the cubs but no sign of the mother.  It took me a moment to follow her trail. I found her making soft distress calls as a group of males mated her.  It was a simple thing to run them off, but afterwards she fell to the ground and did not get up. Protocol was very clear.  If the animals could no long fend for themselves without attacking us, they were to be put down. But at that point, I would need to euthanize her cubs as well.

 

I looked down at her, laying on the ground, bleeding a little.  “You are going to be a problem for me, aren’t you?” I ask. She, of course showed no sign of understanding.  “Aw hell.” I muttered. It was an easy enough thing to pick her up and care her back to my room in the barracks.   There was protocols in place for quarantine if we wanted to acquire pets. The medic wasn’t terribly bothered by her.  Although he did prescribe some antivirals, antibiotics for her and me incase she had been infected with anything by the males.

 

Then I went back for her cubs.

 

That was more of a problem.

 

For one thing, they weren’t pleased for me to be relocating them.  Their distress calls where painfully loud. They bit and clawed at me, which (given them diminutive stature) was more cute than effective. They shrieked and wailed when the medic made sure they were vaccinated against anything that might be problematic. And I took no small amount of teasing carrying one under each arm on my way to my room.

 

As soon as they saw their dam, they ran to her.  The three of them wrapped around each other as they made happy noises and tried to hide from me.

 

This was going to be a problem in the long term, but for now, it would seem I had acquired some pets.

 

### \----

 

Keeping them alive and fed and clean had been a problem.  It had taken many failed attempt before I discovered how to set up waste facilities that they would use.  After nine days the science team pulled me aside.

 

“Report on the health status of your pets.”

 

I was a little surprised they were asking me.  “Bright, alert and responsive. They still try to hide from me, but they accept food when I forage for items they recognize.  I don’t have balanced nutrition for them, but the number of acceptable food stuffs is increasing.”

 

“Have there been any attempts at self harm?”

 

“I have seen no evidence of self harm.”

 

“And how many do you have?”

 

“One female and her two cubs.”

 

At that point we paused to share that information.

 

Then I was taken off patrol duty and given the task to attempt to acquire language skills from my pets.  It was early after our arrival and trying to acquire language from their media was not working. We had no context for what was being said.  Words seemed to be used in contradictory ways.

 

The first thing I discovered is that our living temperatures were suboptimal for them.  This took me too long to realize this. I thought they huddled out of fear. And it would seem they did.  But they also huddled for warmth. The small ones were making distress calls. I thought it was just my presence.  Observing animals changes their behaviour. The female spent a lot of time rubbing their paws. I had originally noted this as a grooming behaviour.

 

The second day of observation, the female attempted to communicate.  This was much earlier than anticipated. I attempted to provide a high value food reward, which she accepted but still growled at me.  I noticed she was feeding all the high value food rewards to her cubs.

 

She also spent a lot of time shedding water from her eyes.  Eventually, I pinned her and took a sample of this excretion.  Analysis showed it to be full of stress hormones. After I released her, she did not get up. The cubs tried to rouse her and when this did not work, the shed their coverings, placed them on the female and began to rub her arms and legs while making distress calls.

 

Peering into the infrared spectrum, I noticed that all off them were holding blood volume near their internal organs and the rubbing seemed to be an attempt to encourage circulation. I adjusted the ambient temperature slightly upwards and the female revived. I made a note of this as well as the resultant decrease in paw grooming.

 

The fifth day of observation fresh plants were provided as food stuff.  All three of them became agitated upon seeing the plant foods. The female carefully divided them into three piles, two with an equal number of pieces and one pile that had one piece less than the other two.  The larger piles were given to the cubs. The female then attempted communication. [[ Audio file is attached ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyPQZrAs6IQ).]  She repeatedly made the same three sylabil sound while looking at me and holding the food.

 

I reported this behaviour and additional samples of this and similar food was provided.  We believed we had detected a pattern when samples [ 1a ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSURhCmw3fI) , [ 1b ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS-xXQr0QqM) and [ 1d ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5dJGN781ec) had similar syllables.  However, this broke down when sample [ 1c ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0pCd3WCE5k), which was clearly from the same plant family, did contain this common final syllable.   However it was noted that all samples from this plant family appeared to be high value rewards.

 

After they had adjusted to the new temperature settings.  I observed them splashing their water supply on themselves.  The female removed all of their secondary coverings and rubbed them vigorously under the water.  After rubbing them under the water, she would bring them near her face, then tense the muscles over her nose and put them back under the water.  I copied this gesture with one of the dry items, then one of the wet items. The wet ones were less fragrant.

 

I arranged for replacement coverings to be provided.  The female and one cub were eager to exchange coverings.  Despite the coverings being carefully selected to be warm and comfortable, the other cub was not.  Many samples of language were acquired during this time. The cub still refused to exchange coverings.  When I attempted to remove the rejected coverings, the female stopped me and communicated loudly with the resistant cub, who shed stress water from its eye before exchanging its covering.  During this time I noted that the cub was male.

 

After the cub had exchanges his coverings, the other cub made a previously unrecorded sound and the male cub changed the blood volume in his face before lashing out at the smaller cub.  The female immediately pinned him and communicated in an agitated manner with both cubs. After this, they all sat in silence their sleep cycle activated.

 

When I reported this, it was noted that precontact females chose coverings in any wavelength, while males seemed to prefer 440 - 540 nm, or 625 - 740 nm.  Few showed a preference for the 590-610 nm range. Perhaps 390 nm was unpleasant to the cub. Upon waking, similar coverings were provided for all three in the spectrum of 450-500 nm.  It was noted that the male cub initially prefered coverings in this range, while the female and the smaller cub showed no preference. However, after an extended period in captivity this preference was lost.

 

The second feeding after their coverings were exchanged was rejected.  The female refused to even touch it. It was a know food item. Again, she tried extensively to communicate with me but she consistently refused the food offering.  It was suggested that I should just leave the food item to see if it would be consumed if the creatures became hungry enough. However after 14 hours, all three of them had settled into ketoacidosis and the food item remained untouched.  After 18 hours, the female began to look for ways out of my room, but appeared unable to see the door, despite having watched me leave on a number of occasions. At 20 hours, the food item still had not been accepted and the creatures had largely stopped moving.  They were still accepting water and the cubs were making distress calls and shedding stress excretions from their eyes, but they did not try to circumvent the female to accept the food item. It appeared to be universally rejected by this population.

 

After 36 hours the food item was removed and alternate food items were provided.  These were readily accepted.

 

Scientific analysis of the rejected food item showed that it now contained large numbers of bacteria that would be highly toxic to the creatures.  Additional research showed that this food item was always heated to an internal temperature of at least 75 C before consumption, where are the offered item was presented raw.  A fresh sample was obtained and heated to 75 C. It was hesitantly consumed when offered.

 

The next experiment involved me offering a named food item, then a previously unnamed food item in an attempt to build more vocabulary as well as to check for consistency of sounds made in response to items.

 

The female, upon understanding that I was attempting to acquire additional vocabulary began trying to provide it.  Nouns for their things in the room were easy enough. But there were few items in my room that the creatures recognized. Adjectives we an additional complication.  Verbs were likewise difficult. The first two I used successfully were [ eat ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjdpPPNeglE) and [ walk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT_9sdX55Gc).

 

When acceptable food items were available, all three of the creatures would walk around the room, having become used to my presence.  When there was not enough acceptable food provided, they instinctively became more still to conserve energy.

 

I began to experiment with mimicking different noises they had made.  Mostly they found this upsetting. Eventually I tried a [ sound ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uOUYhnNRO0) that I had only heard the cubs use.  They all went very still and looked at me.  The female placed one of her appendages on her thorax and offered another [ sound ](https://youtu.be/htt8vvP3wBc) that was not on record.  When I repeated it, she made a little head bob.  Then [ each ](https://youtu.be/7_SGdlTxBqY) of the [ cubs ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz51c4bCPeI) made a sound that was on record but not as having been made by them.   I repeated these sounds. Each of them nodded in term, then they focused their attention on me and waited silently for a while.

 

I bobbed my head as well.  This was clearly not what they were expecting and they returned to whatever it was that they were doing.  I continued to try other sounds. After a while the smallest cub came over and covered my mouth with her hand.  It was the first time any of them had initiated physical contact with me. The female loudly made the sound the smallest cub had made earlier.  At which point the cub stopped touching me and ran to hide behind the female who was watching me with the whites of her eyes showing.

 

I made a point of blinking at her and she copied me.  Then I went very still and closed five of my eyes. I repeated the word she had just said.  They all went very still for a moment then scurried to their preferred corner of the room and the female physically put herself between me and the cubs.  It had been a number of days since they had done that.

 

I left the room to share what had just happened with the science team.  We were unable to draw any conclusions about the meaning of the noises.

  



End file.
